


Under the Canopy of Stars

by Magical_Destiny



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, If there's a line between platonic and romantic, M/M, this fic is somewhere on that line lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-06 02:26:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20283862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magical_Destiny/pseuds/Magical_Destiny
Summary: After calling Warlock, Crowley is a bit out of sorts. To both his and his plants’ relief, his next call is to Aziraphale. Post-series, fluff, angst, and conversation.





	Under the Canopy of Stars

_Seid umschlungen, Millionen!_  
_Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!_  
_Brüder, über'm Sternenzelt  
_ _Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen._

_Be embraced, you millions!_  
_This kiss is for the whole world!  
_ _Brothers, above the canopy of stars  
_ _must dwell a loving father._

_-Ode to Joy, Schiller_

*******

Most of the time, Anthony J. Crowley concentrates on the human side of experience. He sleeps as much as possible, eats excellent food, and, most importantly, consumes a quite extraordinary amount of alcohol. He drives a luxury car that is also an antique, and lives in a flat that would cause interior designers, plant enthusiasts, and art historians to gape in various states of horror and wonder if they were ever permitted inside. They are not, of course. No one is. With the occasional exception of one A.Z. Fell, current bookseller and erstwhile angel.

When A.Z. Fell (an abbreviated play on Aziraphale’s given angelic name, only debatably clever by Crowley’s standards, even though he had helped Aziraphale come up with it) is in Crowley’s flat, he seems to bring a little residual heavenly light with him. The dark and stony walls of Crowley’s flat seem to amplify rather than absorb his light, and even Crowley’s terrified brood of lush and verdant houseplants lean traitorously toward the angel as though he is a second, more accessible sun. 

Today, however, the walls are shadowed, the plants droop listlessly, and even Crowley’s collection of stolen artwork seems dull. This may be due, Crowley ruminates darkly, to the pronounced lack of Aziraphale’s presence. He refuses to consider that it might also be related to his own melancholy mood. 

He slips deeper into his chair (a throne nicked from a king who had managed to get on Crowley’s last nerve a few centuries earlier), and glares halfheartedly at the weak bit of sunlight trickling through the windows. He is _feeling things_ and, as ever, it’s a damned nuisance. Aziraphale is always saying that it’s good to express emotions (a charming bit of hypocrisy from an angel who has practically turned repression into an Olympic sport), but Crowley has no interest in such a pointless exercise, and no outlets even if he did. 

Well, one outlet. Who is currently _not_ here. Hence the lackluster light, the drooping plants, the dull art…and one stagnating demon. 

“You’d better not even_ think_ of wilting back there,” Crowley grinds out, gratified to hear a rustling as his plants tremble with fear. He clenches every muscle a beat longer, finally letting out a tense breath that is alarmingly close to a melodramatic sigh. “I’m calling Aziraphale,” he mutters, not sure whether he really wants the plants to hear. The rustling stops instantly, replaced by an audible whispering of leaves that manages to sound positively _thrilled._

“Bin the lot of you,” Crowley mutters, this time low enough that he knows they won’t hear, and picks up the phone.

*******

“Ah,” is all Aziraphale says when Crowley opens the door. Crowley hasn’t spoken yet, hasn’t pulled off his glasses, hasn’t even gotten started on all the body language and tones of voice that would demonstrate high dudgeon, but Aziraphale has understood it all from a glance. He’s always perceptive at the most inconvenient moments. Crowley thinks hard about slamming the door and sitting alone in the dark, but he’s throwing it open and letting the angel in before he can finish the thought.

Aziraphale has brought his light with him, of course. There’s no real change in the light waves of the room, but already the gloom has receded a little. Crowley is positive his plants would lean around the corner to wave at the angel if they could. Crowley crosses his arms tight, faintly aware that he’s trying to cover a painful hollow inside his chest. 

Aziraphale does a dreadful job of trying to further size up Crowley and his mood without being obvious about it. Crowley is winding himself up to tell him off when Aziraphale turns and disappears into the next room to greet the plants. “Hello, my dears. How are you today? Lovely, just lovely. Oh my, have you flowered already?” He murmurs to each of the plants and in-between little encouragements, calls back to Crowley. 

“How beautiful you’ve grown! What have you been doing today, Crowley? Such healthy vines.”

Crowley raises his eyebrows over his sunglasses and briefly toys with the idea of answering all of that as if it’s meant for him. In the end, he doesn’t have the energy for that level of repartee and mutters, “Sitting,” instead. 

“Hmm,” Aziraphale replies, “You sounded…distracted on the phone.” He follows Crowley from his indoor garden, looking around as if hoping Crowley has procured comfortable seating—or any seating at all—in the ironically named sitting room since his last visit. Crowley hasn’t, of course. He snaps at his throne; it obediently pulls itself away from and perpendicular to the large desk. Crowley waves a hand at it absently. 

“Thank you,” Aziraphale replies, arranging himself, his coat, his trousers, and finally his hands, folding them neatly on his lap. Crowley slouches against the desk. 

Now or never, he thinks.

“I spoke to Warlock today,” Crowley says, quiet and even, like mentioning the weather. 

Aziraphale tries to match Crowley’s containment, but his eyes still grow wide. “I see,” he says, but it’s obvious from his face that he does not. “Did you go to visit him? I would have come with you.” 

There’s a lot in those words. Further questions like _Why?_ and _You didn’t want me to come?_ and _You know I’d always go with you, yes?_ Crowley feels wretchedly unable to contend with _any_ of that, so he presses on.

“I thought I should check in. He was in Megiddo with Hastur and Ligur, last I heard. Adam reset everything, but I wanted to be sure.”

“That he was all right,” Aziraphale finishes quietly. A moment of tension as Crowley feels Aziraphale do the mental math of Crowley’s mood and the hanging question he hasn’t asked yet. For a moment, Crowley remembers the hours and days and _years_ Aziraphale spent in the guise of a ridiculous gardener, walking with Warlock among the flowerbeds and trees, coaxing out every animal great and small for Warlock to see and touch. “And was he?” Aziraphale asks at last.

Crowley nods sharply. “He was glad to hear from me. Said I was his favorite nanny. Can’t imagine why.”

The weight of concern for Warlock slides from Aziraphale’s shoulders just as concern for Crowley clouds his face. 

“Of course you were his favorite. You were an excellent nanny.” 

Crowley doesn’t have time to point out any of the numerous and glaringly obvious flaws in this assessment before Aziraphale is asking, “What’s wrong, Crowley?” 

“How do you think he would have made out, in the Apocalypse?” Crowley asks, voice abruptly a bit too loud and sharp. 

His tone cuts through any objections Aziraphale would have made to the premise, for when he answers, he only says, “He would have died.” The words, spoken with pain, exacerbate the ragged feeling beneath Crowley’s crossed arms. 

“Exactly,” Crowley bursts out, pushing off from the desk to pace. “What—what kind of—“ He throws up his hands in exasperation, eyes burning, throat tight, and whirls back to Aziraphale. “Why test humanity to destruction?”

It’s a thought that’s been eating at him, if he’s honest, from the moment he looked at the beautiful tree in the middle of the garden and knew the humans couldn’t resist it.

He’s thinking of great floods, and the dawn of every plague from the Beginning until the Apocalypse that wasn’t. Every natural disaster, every human disaster, every time someone died without understanding what was happening to them, let alone why. Thinking back further, to the moment he fell out of heaven, never understanding the wheres and whys and hows of the universe. Lost, lost—in the Beginning there was light, and Crowley was cast out of it, followed by all of humanity. From the first Adam to the one who was very nearly the last. 

And there was Warlock in the middle, taken from his parents, surveilled by angels and demons, interfered with by a particular angel and demon, and finally abandoned in the desolate valley of Megiddo. 

“Best nanny,” Crowley mutters, distantly alarmed by the watery sound of his voice. “All the wide world, and he thinks I cared for him best. He might be right, you know. How sad is that?”

Aziraphale is silent so long that Crowley finally looks at him—and immediately wishes he hadn’t. There are tears in the angel’s eyes. Real, human tears, glittering in the weak light from Crowley’s windows. If there’s one thing that sets Aziraphale apart from his fellow angels—aside from the obvious things like cleverness, a sense of humor, and a truly unique combination of kindness and self-indulgence—it’s his capacity for sadness. Crowley sees the pain in his chest reflected in Aziraphale’s eyes. Feeling calmer, Crowley drops his shoulders, his arms, his hands. Drifts back to the desk, and slouches against it. 

Aziraphale thinks a long time before he speaks. When he finally begins, Crowley is desperate to hear his judgement. “You cared for the child, Crowley. And you cared enough for the world to try to save it. It was well done of you.

“I know you’ve felt the pain of the humans keenly through your life,” he continues quietly, “and I’ve always admired you for that. It is a difficult destiny they have, born into struggle and uncertainty. Is it—I wonder—“ he pauses, searching for answers Crowley can’t see. “Is it so different from ours?”

Crowley snorts a bitter laugh. “Is that supposed to be comforting, angel? ‘The blind leading the blind’?”

“Comforting to _them_, perhaps,” Aziraphale says thoughtfully. “‘The blind _loving_ the blind.”

_Right,_ Crowley thinks._ Not untangling whatever that means._ “What were we supposed to do then? What’re we supposed to do now?” he demands, electing to ignore the edge of old grief in his voice.

“Our best.” 

Aziraphale says it with infuriating calm. Crowley thinks back to the wall around Eden, to the angel of the Eastern Gate fretting, so unsure about whether he’d done the right thing. Thinks back to the demon at his side, wondering the same thing.

“Aren’t you curious?” He demands. “Aren’t you angry?” He swallows, willing back the wretched cluster of emotions vibrating inconveniently in his throat. He holds back the last part of his question. _Aren’t you afraid?_

AziraphaIe thinks. “I suppose I am, sometimes.”

“Well, what do you do about it? What’s the _right_ thing to do, angel?” Crowley isn’t sure how interested he is in the answers to these questions, but he’s dangling high above certainty, lost somewhere between anger and despair. He thinks of Aziraphale’s miserable magic act, a transparent misdirection followed by a swiftly produced coin catching the light. He wonders whether Aziraphale can produce an answer for him as easily. A bright coin and a brighter smile.

But Aziraphale is already shaking his head. Crowley wonders how Warlock felt, standing in the dust of Meggido. Surrounded by bewildered demons and parents, all wanting something from him without ever defining what. 

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale says. “The Ineffable Plan is, well, you know. So I just—,” he gestures in a loose circle, encompassing everything around, “—love.” 

The words “ineffable” and “plan” used to make Crowley want to scream. They still do, only not quite as much since he and Aziraphale used them to win an argument with Gabriel and Beelzebub. But _still._

“Love the humans,” Crowley says, not quite a question.

“Humans,”Aziraphale agrees. “The World. The Almighty.” He pauses, giving Crowley a strange, soft look. “Each other.“

Crowley barges through Aziraphale’s words, a demonic bull in an angelic china shop. “Demons aren’t meant to love, angel. Going about doing good, spreading joy, doing miracles.” He flourishes his hands like someone tossing candy, confetti, or something equally pointless. “You know that.”

For a moment, he’s afraid Aziraphale will stand up and do something drastic like reach for his hand. He isn’t sure whether he’s relieved or disappointed when he doesn’t. When he finally speaks, his hands are still folded neatly in his lap. 

“Love comes in many forms, my dear. Including the pain you’re feeling right now.”

Crowley scoffs. “It’s not love to see when something’s not right.”

“No. But it is certainly love when it hurts you to see it.”

There’s a rush of relief as the knot in Crowley’s chest eases, just slightly. He’d suspected Aziraphale might understand him better than he understood himself. He’d called him hoping for light in the darkness. Seeking knowledge never comes with a price when it’s Aziraphale he seeks it from. 

Of course, that doesn’t make the revelations any less discomfiting. Wisdom, Crowley has found, is seldom comfortable.

“Pain comes with love, then?” Crowley mutters. “Sounds like the work of my lot, not yours.”

Aziraphale’s face, already etched in concern, falls still further. “I believe it’s actually the work of humans.” 

Crowley sees past the grim set of Aziraphale’s mouth and the pain in his bright eyes—sees all the way back to the worried angel who watched the first man and woman walk into the barren desert, trailed by predators. Sees further back to whispered temptations to Eve, her face rapt and fingers sticky with apple juice. Not for the first time, he wonders about the point of it all. 

“Shadows and sun go together, Crowley,” Aziraphale adds quietly. 

As though death and damnation were only shadows instead of the undoing of mankind. Angel and demonkind too, sometimes. 

“I wish they didn’t,” Crowley grinds out, but the fire has gone out of his words, and he’s left with only ashes. 

Aziraphale, Crowley thinks, is always so demonstrative with the brighter side of his emotional spectrum. So free with smiles and kind words, so generous with sharing (besides his books, of course, but Crowley can’t fault anyone for a little possessiveness over what they love). When Aziraphale is sad, however, he speaks less, smiles rarely, and shuts up tight on the physical and metaphysical planes. Crowley hates it when Aziraphale is sad. And now he’s caused it. Sighing, he tucks away his own ragged feelings and prepares to push himself off the desk. 

“I’m sorry, angel,” he says, grim but genuine. He just manages to force a casual tone into his voice when he says, “Let’s have lunch.”

Aziraphale shakes his head and stands. For a terrible moment, Crowley thinks he will leave.

But the angel only moves closer, propping himself on the desk beside Crowley. 

“I felt the same way, in the beginning,” Aziraphale says. “Full of regret.”

Of all things Aziraphale could have said, Crowley thinks he expected that least—and understands it most. He’d had the same feelings the first time Adam and Eve went hungry. When Eve went into labor—a purely joyous occasion, he’d thought—and suddenly started to _scream._ When he looked in on Cain and Abel and found only one brother and a bloody stone. 

Whatever he’d told his superiors, murder had _not_ been his idea.

_Did you question God then?_ he wants to ask. _Did you pray for Eve when she wept and bled? For Cain when he understood what he had done and the curse he would bear for it?_

“How do you feel now?” he asks instead.

Aziraphale is thoughtful beside him. “Now I think of how much I would have missed if we were still in the garden. Or further back: still in heaven.”

“Angel, if you’re about to tell me that all the pain of the world has been worth it—“ Crowley doesn’t have time to finish the idea or even get properly angry about it before Aziraphale is shaking his head and patting the hand Crowley has braced on the desk between them.

“No, no, of course not, my dear. All I mean to say is...the best parts of my life came after the garden.” A pause, filled for Crowley with the word “best” and the memories to match it. 

Almost every one of them involves Aziraphale. 

As if echoing his very thoughts, the angel says, “They were all with you.”

A sweet smile drifts from his lips and hangs between them. The room feels brighter again, warmer with Aziraphale’s presence and light. And not just around him—Crowley can feel it creeping into the dark places in his head and heart, further easing and illuminating the tangle he’s been struggling with since hanging up the phone with Warlock on the other end. 

Crowley wishes he wasn’t rubbish at words when they matter most. 

“I knew you never had any fun on your own,” he says weakly. An anemic jab—not his best work.

Beside him, Aziraphale’s smile goes distant and contemplative. “Oh!” He says suddenly. “Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. I attended that one alone, I believe. You could be a dreadful concert companion in those days, you know.”

Crowley smiles wide and wicked for the first time all day. “The Classical Era. Not my fault that there were always too many repeats. They were _obsessed_ with repetition.”

“And there’s nothing you hate more than repetition,” Aziraphale huffs disapprovingly, but his smile remains. 

“Downright unimaginative, repeats. Are you quite sure you attended that premiere alone, angel?”

Aziraphale nods and Crowley shakes his head, both with equal certainty. “You walked in alone,” Crowley corrects, “and I bumped into you in the crowd. Couldn’t miss Beethoven, after all.” (Classical era or not, Crowley couldn’t totally resist the volcanic emotion and rebellious construction of Beethoven. He may also have found the Ninth Symphony to be slightly moving.) 

Aziraphale frowns as he sifts through his memories. Crowley waits with only moderate impatience. Sifting through six thousand years of memories, he knows, can take a few moments. “Oh!” Aziraphale says at last. "Oh yes, I’d forgotten. You were there! How could I have forgotten?”

Crowley shrugged. “Probably distracted. You blubbered for a full ten minutes in the final movement. At _least._”

“How could I help it? He’d worked so hard on that music, poured his soul into it—you can still feel the hints of his essence when it’s performed, Crowley—“

Crowley knows this; he’s been to several performances of the Ninth Symphony in the centuries since its premiere. But he’ll be buggered before he admits that to Aziraphale. Especially when riling Aziraphale up is lifting him out of the darkness that’s been sucking at him like quicksand. 

“—and you laughed at me,” Aziraphale is saying about that night, with very mild reproach. 

“After I gave you a handkerchief,” Crowley answers. “Which you never returned, by the way. Anyway, you deserved to be laughed at for crying over a poem about ‘joy’ and ‘brotherhood.’” Crowley is particularly adept at inserting air quotes with just his voice. It’s a skill that is quite beyond most humans, who have to use their hands to achieve anything like the same effect. 

He grins at Aziraphale beside him, anticipating a swift and sharp rejoinder. But Aziraphale’s smile softens again and he looks at Crowley with an alarming level of sincerity. It’s all the demon can do not to shove himself off the desk and put a room’s worth of distance between himself and that genuine regard. 

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale says from much too close beside him. “That’s not what it’s about at all. It’s about love. And peace between humanity and God. It’s about the sun without shadows. That’s why I—“ he trails off, looking at something Crowley can’t see. “Because it was almost like hearing Her voice telling me there was hope. For them. And for us as well.” 

“Sun without shadows,” Crowley murmurs, looking at the cold stone walls all around. “How can there be light without dark, angel?”

Their shoulders brush when Aziraphale shrugs lightly and counters, "How can there be an apocalypse without the end of the world?” 

“You really have hope, after everything?”

Aziraphale leans in, the smile on his face proclaiming brightly that he finds joy in this room, this moment, these words—in Crowley. “Absolutely,” the angel says, and oh—

Sometimes even Crowley can’t deny that he loves the angel terribly.

He looks away. Clears his throat, resettles his glasses, and contemplates his Mona Lisa. It looks…different. When he’d called Warlock, it had seemed colorless and inert. A locked room of a canvas, something tight and sad about the woman’s eyes and lips. Now he’s almost made up his mind that she’s smiling. 

“Perhaps we should visit Warlock,” Aziraphale says suddenly. “See how he’s getting on. Make sure the new gardener and nanny are up to snuff.” 

“He’s getting a bit old for a nanny,” Crowley answers. 

“Well,” Aziraphale says primly, “You’re never too old for godfathers.”

Crowley smiles, close-lipped and, for the first time all day, feels content. “Angel?”

“Hm?”

“How are we going to explain our reappearance?”

“A visit, of course.”

“And why are the former gardener and the former nanny visiting together? They weren’t even friends.”

“Of course they were friends!”

“They did nothing but disagree on what to teach the boy.”

“They both wanted the best for him,” Aziraphale objects, as though that supersedes any disagreements. Maybe it does. 

Crowley nods slowly. “All right, friends. But work friends, surely. So why are they visiting together?”

“Maybe they were more than ‘work friends.’” Aziraphale is wearing the expression he always wears when encountering a human idea he doesn’t fully understand. 

“Friend friends,” Crowley says, smirking.

Aziraphale contemplates long and hard. “Perhaps they got married after they left service.”

It’s a very good thing, Crowley reflects, that he isn’t drinking anything just at the moment. If he had been, his sudden choking would have been far worse. 

“Really, Crowley,” Aziraphale says reprovingly. “It’s not that outlandish. Francis rather liked Nanny. And he was sorry to leave his position.” 

After a harrowing moment, Crowley stops sputtering. He breathes, thinks, and finally shrugs. “Didn’t realize you’d put so much thought into Francis,” he says. “Should’ve gone into theater when you had the chance, angel. Before cameras. Now an immortal would be found out in a few decades. A shame, you missing your chance on the stage.” He can feel Aziraphale’s patience thinning. After a long, wicked grin, Crowley relents. “I suppose Nanny liked Francis too. All right, angel, they’re married now. And going to visit their young charge.”

Aziraphale pushes himself upright and straightens his waistcoat. “it was just an idea, Crowley. But we can visit separately if you prefer. It will certainly make the story simpler. I just thought a little effort might be worth it.”

The angel is ruffled, but not truly angry. Anymore than Brother Francis had been angry with Nanny’s dark suggestions for Warlock, or Aziraphale had been angry with Crowley’s ribbing at concerts. For every reproof he’d aimed at Crowley, there had been at least as many fond smiles and warm invitations. Probably, if Crowley was being entirely mathematical about it, there had been a great many more.

He stands, drifting to Aziraphale’s elbow and snapping a fully packed suitcase into existence in case Aziraphale is inclined to act on their plans immediately. 

“Angel,” Crowley says, “Of course we’ll go together.”

**Author's Note:**

> Normally, I would write extensive author's notes. As it is, I'm literally sitting in an airport about to go on a massive flight and I only have time to say that I hope you enjoyed this fic. Idk if the backstory to this fic is more novel or show with how long Crowley and Aziraphale stayed with Warlock as gardener and nanny...but I'm definitely picturing a scenario where a new nanny and gardener were hired later. Hence Warlock loving Nanny Ashtoreth the best. Who wouldn't, after all? Anyway, I'm late to the Good Omens party, but having a blast anyway. Wish me luck on my flight, and leave a comment if you enjoyed?? <3


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